donutszenmom.com

I know there is always discussion among bloggers about what words make a site’s stats go up. Usually swear words work well, and apparently there are spikes during acrimonious blog wars. But what I find is that I get lots of search engine referrals around the term “Dansko.” And of course there are the associated terms: “ugly,” “shoes,” and “clogs.” And one of my favorite strings, “ugly freaking shoes.”

Okay, okay, I get it. People think Danskos are ugly. But they are also searching with phrases like “aching feet” and “foot pain.” Well, you have to make your choices and set your priorities, people. Here’s the official word: Danskos are my shoe of choice (ask The Cop, I think he may be a little horrified at my attachment to the Danskos). I have had pain from plantar fasciitis for YEARS. Tore my left arch during a period of lots of running. Recurring pain for… yes, it’s been almost 14 years.

Now that I wear Danskos daily (yes, daily), I have ZERO pain. None. Nada.

Do I miss pretty shoes? Yes.

Would I wear them again?

No.

So the keywords are: “ugly” and “Dansko” and “pain-free.”

They’re beautiful to me.

***

No practice this morning. I slept horribly due to coughing and post-nasal drip. (Euw.)

Taking the day off from work. In hopes of being reasonably fit for the upcoming Annie Pace weekend.

Bad me. Back to applying ye olde sports medicine theories to Ashtanga.

Felt crummy yesterday. The Cop’s cold. Still, it was lovely to go up north to visit My Gift and see her new place (much nicer than the last place) and meet her new cat (cute, and likely at least half feral) and her new roommate’s puppy (clumsy and adorable). My Gift looks happy and seems cheerful. End of the semester is December 15. So coming up on finals. She plans to be stressed during that time.

Went by the tattoo place she likes, but the artist she prefers wasn’t there. Oh well. I will walk around with my tattoo drawings in my bag until the time is right.

Woke this morning with a sore throat and general uckiness. Followed the sports medicine rule: you can work out provided there is no fever and if all of the congestion is above the neck. Yup. I fell within the prescribed boundaries.

Just did primary. Felt fine, actually, if a little spacey. Strong enough, but aware that some of the poses were rather automatic (versus being focused and present). I have my personal theory that heating the system up a bit kills the virus. So I expect I am slightly more healed than when I started.

Now I’m at work, and just feel like a person with a cold.

Day off so we can go visit My Gift and see her new place. Got up late, practiced, made pancakes. Mmmm.

I want to go by Cost Plus and look for some Chinese bowls and ceramic spoons for My Gift, as a housewarming present. Speaking of housewarming, she told me they still haven’t turned the heat on in the house. Just to put that in perspective, she lives up north, where today’s high is going to be 50 and the low, 17 degrees F. Okay, they do have a woodburning stove, and she has a heater that she turns on in her room when her alarm goes off in the morning, but still! I am horrified! It’s 64 degrees here in Scottsdale right now, and that feels pretty chilly to me. Oh well, I guess they are being green. And cheap.

I’ll bring her another down blanket, too. Sheesh. Crazy kids.

I think I may be fighting The Cop’s cold. He’s getting better, but I feel kind of yucky. Definitely want to fend it off — Annie Pace is here this weekend, and I want to feel healthy!

Yes, I know. How many times is she going to mention Freeman’s talks? Well, I don’t know. But how can I not, after this:

I was out in the back yard, cleaning up all the stuff that blew around in the tremendous winds we had last night. As per usual, when doing household tasks, I was listening to a podcast. Loose Ends and Stinky Mats. How delightful is it, to hear RF talk about parkour? Quite. And then he mentions that he’s been thinking about how to practice in old age, and when one is very sick, or dying. I am really happy that he’s on this job, and I hope he keeps sharing what he comes up with.

Which makes me think about this idea that talking about practice is bad. Actually, on my zen calendar, this month’s quote reads, “Conceal your practice, work inside.” This is one of the last lines in Song of the Bright Mirror Samadhi, by Dongshan (Tung-shan Liang-chih), founder of the Soto school of zen.

I don’t know the answer for this one. Talk about practice, don’t talk about practice. Maybe an okay thing to talk about it, but not so great to expect or imagine people will understand. Or even that you will…

Nice quiet day yesterday. A call from My Gift and her roommate as they were busy making casseroles.

“She has a bunch of huge cans of mushroom soup, which goes into all the casseroles,” My Gift told me. “I think it might be a midwestern thing. Do you know anything about this?”

My Gift has never had casseroles. We always ate a Mediterranean diet for the most part: pasta, veggies, bread, garlic, olive oil. Mmmm. Her roommate said that her family always had casseroles. “Maybe that’s why they’re so tall?” we speculated.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have stopped eating meat when I was 10,” said My Gift, somewhat ruefully. She isn’t pleased that she’s only 5’2″. Especially since her friends always seem to be in the 5’7″ to 5’10″ range. Oh well. They were cooking for friends and planning a big partay. I’ll have to check in later and see how it went, if all the casseroles gotten eaten up.

Meanwhile, my sister and her girlfriend had dinner with my parents. I think all of the holiday drama probably happened over there. Boodiba mentioned people who have “Hallmark expectations.” These expectations make holidays pretty brutal, in my experience. Generally I try to keep a distance. I called over early in the day and everyone sounded okay. Hope it went off well.

The Cop and I had a terrific “cocoon” kind of day. He is being dogged by the start of a cold, so we just hung out, watched football, had dinner. He’d worked the night before, and had to work again last night, so it was short holiday, but nice, nonetheless. He has extremely simple tastes for Thanksgiving. I feel guilty, kind of, because it is so easy: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, biscuits, pie. The kicker is he likes all the stuff from cans or pre-prepared. When I first knew him, I asked if he wanted me to make really good stuff from scratch, but he nixed that idea. Alrighty. Basically it means I don’t have to stress at all, and he’s perfectly content with the outcome. No oyster and chestnut stuffing at this house. It’s interesting, because back when my brother was alive, I would always make a point of flying up to San Fran and making him and his boyfriend Thanksgiving dinner. They liked as elaborate and fancy a meal as could be pulled off. The good china, the best silver, the works. By contrast, yesterday The Cop and I were in our jammies playing Scrabble on the couch (well, I was playing online and he was complaining that I wouldn’t let him help — he’s been banned because he gets too angry about the words he thinks shouldn’t be accepted, like “em” and “xi”) and watching a football game. I guess in the end, the issue is whether the people are happy, more than about the food.

As I mentioned, The Cop worked on Wednesday night, so he was sleeping as I was preparing the turkey. I put on more of the Richard Freeman talks. This one was Loose Ends and Stinky Mats. The turkey’s blood (gah!) had leaked in the fridge, so I decided to just wash the whole inside of the refrigerator. Listening to RF made it a pleasant task. The Cop got up a little later.

“Was that Tim Miller?” he asked.

I think this is hysterical, because The Cop doesn’t really keep up with these sorts of things, so I guess he was just going for a name he recognized.

“No, it was Richard Freeman,” I said. “I don’t know if Tim Miller does much talking. I think he just does.”

The Cop nodded approvingly. I guess he figures Tim Miller is his kind of guy, though he’s happy if Richard Freeman makes me happy.

Practices have been lovely the past few mornings. Yesterday’s was strong and easy, today’s was kind of creaky and stiff. At first I felt frustrated with this morning’s practice, but I didn’t pursue the feeling and it went away.

Today: some reading for the new work project. Interestingly, the most intellectually stimulating projects I do for work usually require that I think about them on the weekends, when my mind isn’t all full of details and little tasks. It’s a pleasure, though, to actually think. Wish I could do a little more of that when I am actually at work.

Okay, so if you want to hear someone speak remarkably clearly about meditation, check out part 2 of Obstacles to Yoga: The Field of Ignorance.

One thing I’m loving is that RF has translated “kleshas” as “torments,” rather than “defilements” or “corruptions” or something like that. Kind of makes them more active and less deeply tainted, somehow. A little more rajasic and a little less tamasic. Nice. There’s a good bit in there about how thinning the kleshas through practice and meditation allows one to set them aside (though the seed may remain), and how ongoing practice of this setting aside can help us see through the (physical) being, or perhaps perceive it as a kind of “bias.” Aw, just listen to the audio: it’s better than I can explain.

There was a whiff of all of this in practice this morning. Which made hearing it played back to me (in words, no less!) during my drive to work particularly amusing. Just a clear moment when I could see that the mind?body? is a manifestation of what I call belief systems, and what other people probably call something much more accurate and poetic — like “a bias.” Nevertheless.

This kind of clarity makes the being like a knife blade. Very reminiscent of the zen sword — transparent, compassionate and absolute.

Then the key is to let go.

Current thought (oops, back to the vrittis!) is tattoo on the inside upper forearm.

This morning, driving to work, I listened to Richard Freeman’s audiocast: Obstacles to Yoga: The Field of Ignorance. Offered in his inimitable style. Have I mentioned I’m a fan?

I was particularly struck by what he has to say about svadhyaya. Specifically, the definition that transitions from vedic chanting to “self-study.” I think I was struck, because I was thinking about how my current home practice feels lately, and there is a significant aspect of self-study involved. A duh! kind of statement, yes, but there you have it.

Yoga has cooled me out (or thinned my kleshas, perhaps) so that I can withstand the internal monolog/drama a bit more dispassionately. God knows, it’s weird what can come up when you stop being distracted by the emotional and physical and psychological and shiny and desirable and compelling and entertaining things going at warp speed around you. It’s strange just to be there, alone with the (supposed) self.

It seems so far away, now, too. Here I am, half a day into work, and I can barely remember practicing this morning. No worries, I can see what it’s like again tomorrow morning.

And in happy news: I got a promotion this morning. Always nice when something like that happens. I am still kinda tired from all the work I’ve done since May, though, so mostly I’m just happy I have Thursday and Friday off.

Why am I imagining a svadhyaya tattoo? Hmmmm. Where should it go, I wonder…

All last week, The Cop would come into the kitchen in the morning, make his coffee, and announce, “Time to practice!” Last night, I mentioned that I’d noticed his increased participation in my practice, and he said, “Well, I know you are going through a transition.”

Indeed. I am in a practice at home mode. I am loving my little heater in the yoga room, and I am loving using my crash pad to lie over for chakrasana (it gives me enough of a lift that I can practice no-momentum chakrasanas). I love that I am totally unselfconscious at home. It makes practice very dear. And also very integrated into my life.

I was definitely badly burned out over the past few months. Was it work? Was it practice? Was it the traveling? In the end, I can’t really separate those elements of my life enough to make the call one way or another. All I know was the I felt tremendously pressured and totally lacking in resilience. So it is delightful to have the yoga room feel like a regular refuge each morning. And to be able to sleep in and start later. Somehow, over the past few months, I’ve found myself leaving the office later and later each evening. Not healthy. Decided that instead of trying to get out earlier, I could just start later! Which means I am not getting out of bed until 5:30 AM. Early, yes, but not as early as 4:30! That extra hour in the morning has been hugely rejuvenating.

I have a huge new project for work, which is kind of scary and kind of thrilling. I’ll link to the blog I’ve started for the project in a bit. For now, though, I can only say that it’s about corporate real estate, distributed work, IT, and the future of the organization. Woohoo! I love projects like this. I get to read a lot and dream things up.

Back on the home front, The Cop and I did some work on the front yard yesterday. The Cop’s vision of a desert landscaped front yard is coming to fruition. It looks great! His next project is to put the pool out of commission. We don’t use it, and he’s unhappy with how much water and electricity it uses. So he’ll design a solution that’ll: 1) shut down the pool, 2) safeguard it for some day in the future when we might want to fill it again, 3) look good, and 4) give us some useable space. All this (the front yard project and the pool project) because he doesn’t have a car renovation project (his hobby of choice) going on in the garage. Once the pool is done, I might suggest a patio resurfacing project. Oh but wait, he did mention a solar panel project this morning…

Thanksgiving will be quiet — My Gift will stay up at her place. She and her roommate are having a Thanksgiving meal for the folks who work at the brew pub where they work part time. A college kind of Thanksgiving. Fun! The Cop works Thanksgiving evening, so we’ll have an early dinner and then he’ll be off. My sister and her girlfriend will be visiting with my parents on the other side of the valley. We’ll meet up at some point over the weekend. So everything is all set and I don’t have to do much. Nice.

One of the first things I read this morning was Buddhadharma online, which contained this terrific quote:

In Shobogenzo, “Shukke-kudoku” (Merits of the Monastic’s Life), Dogen Zenji said that most people are not able to acquire the way-seeking mind of spiritual awareness without deeply understanding that a day consists of 6,400,099,180 moments. This is a wonderful number. I don’t know where Dogen found this number, but saying that there are 6,400,099,180 moments in a day is not talking about a mysterious idea; it is talking about something real. A moment is called ksana in Sanskrit. Sometimes we say that one finger snap has sixty moments, so one finger snap equals sixty ksana. A Buddhist dictionary may say that a moment equals one seventy-fifth of a second. According to the Abhidharma scriptures, a moment consists of sixty-five instants. The actual numbers are not so important, but we should have a sense of how quickly time goes.

According to Buddhist teaching, all beings in the universe appear and disappear in a moment. The term impermanence expresses the functioning of moment, or the appearance and disappearance of all beings as a moment. It means that all life is transient, constantly appearing and disappearing, constantly changing. You are transient, I am transient, and Buddha is transient. Everything is transient. Wherever you may go, transiency follows you. Transiency is the naked nature of time.

I seem to be having, as often happens around this time of year, practices where I can hear clearly, moment by moment, what’s going on with my body/mind. And it drowns out the usual inner monolog of what’s good and bad and scary and all that. I’ve been doing home practice, which seems to help keep this inner, nonjudgmental focus on track.

Yeah, yeah, I was all whine, whine, whine yesterday. Felt a little better this morning. Largely because I put things into perspective. I’ve been travelling for a few weeks, I’ve worked four weekends in a row, and damn it, I’m tired! So feeling sluggish and unmotivated is probably just normal.

For some reason, Sanjaya’s “just do it” comment yesterday made me think: “Oh, okay.”

This cracks me up. You know what regular practice does? It makes you non-reactive. Sure, I have things I react to, but much less than ever before. Mostly just work stuff that irritates me every so often. But when it’s resolved, it’s over. Driving? No worries. No reactions for the most part. Just every so often. And then it’s a case of thinking, “Hey, look how pissed I am,” and within a moment it’s gone.

So I am all whiny about practice and Sanjaya says, “Just practice,” and I read it at the end of a long day at work and think, “Okay.”

New guy at Mysore this morning. Checking things out. I did my practice. No thinking. Well, not much. Made a point of not making any decision about what I was going to do. No projecting into the future. Chugged along through primary, then did the intermediate portion. A-okay. My triceps are really sore, I’m guessing from the long bakasanas on the bhujapidasana and supta kurmasana exits. I hang out there, trying to remember how the breath is supposed to go in order to facilitate the jump back into chaturanga. Still sucking on the trying to get my knees into my armpits business, but I imagine it will come.

Backbends felt nice. I did some plain old urdhva dhanurasanas and then some dropping-back-using-the-wall ones, and then VBG came over for assisted ones. I’m all set up, bending baaaaack as far as I can and he is just standing there. I’m thinking, “Damn! Is he going to make me do this myself?!” [Subtext: "Oh God, please no!"]. Nah, he’s not going to let me fall. He waits until I’m heading for the ground and internally clocking the ever-increasing speed of my descent before he reaches out and presses a hand against either side of my hips — enough pressure to slow me down a bit. I’m understanding the mechanics of this — the balance and the coordination. Just need to get the shoulders/chest open more, so my arms can be straighter. Do-able.

Okay. Question of the day: How important is chakrasana? Anyone care to wax poetic on the reasons I should value it?